The present disclosure relates generally to social coding and particularly to techniques that can facilitate collaborative social coding.
An integrated development environment or an IDE is a software application that provides programmers and designers of software the ability to provide multiple development utilities in a single cohesive unit. The facilities are comprehensive and can include source code editors, debuggers, compilers and interpreters, build automations and the like. Various tools are integrated in many IDEs to help simplify construction of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and other components that help enable its use with object oriented software development.
IDEs are designed to maximize programmer productivity by providing components with similar user interfaces. The program typically provides many features for authoring, modifying, compiling, deploying and debugging software. IDEs help reducing setup time which can increase developer productivity. More comprehensive integration of all development tasks has the potential to improve overall productivity beyond helping with setup tasks. For example, code can be continuously parsed while it is being edited, providing instant feedback when syntax errors are introduced. That can speed learning a new programming language and its associated libraries.
Some IDEs are dedicated to a specific programming language but many have multiple language capabilities. In addition, while many IDEs are graphical based, text based IDEs also exist. The IDE may be a standalone application or may be included as part of one or more existing and compatible applications. In recent years, both web based and mobile device based IDEs have been gaining popularity. IDEs for developing hypertext markup language (HTML) applications are commonly used. Many web-site designers use an IDE that automates many of the tasks involved.